I do not think anyone can get away with offending someone in some way. There is always going to be someone who gets offended but does not let anyone know. I know people try to use the stupid phrase "No offense, but..." to get away with offending people, but it never works. Now I am not saying that we should go around attempting to not offend people because I honestly think that is impossible. Almost anything that you say to a person could most likely somehow offend them. However sometimes to tell the truth, there is no way to avoid offending someone. I think that is where a lot of offensive things are said, when people are trying to tell others the truth. People either offend someone when they are trying to say the truth in a non-offensive fashion or when they bluntly tell the truth. Another time that people often get offended is during those moments that people speak or act before thinking, making them total accidents. A lot of things become offensive because people don’t realize what offends people. I think that people have “personal preferences” about what offends them. For example I don’t get offend what so ever when someone makes fun of my very pale skin, however my younger sister would most likely cry if someone even noticed her tan fading. She would be offended that someone thought she was not tan enough.
Obviously the sorority members were not even thinking about offending a group of people when they decided to have their Mexican dress-up party. Everyone knows that they were just looking for a theme for their party. I am in no way saying that what they did was right. But my classmates have brought up a very valid point; should we avoid certain Halloween costumes to avoid offending people? For example, do Wiccan members get offended by people when they dress up as witches for Halloween? When I dressed as a witch for Halloween, I was seven years old and had no idea that I could be hurting someone’s feelings. I was only slightly surprised that this incident became a worldwide issue. However I think that the main reason this issue got so much attention was because it was something that could give Penn State more of a bad rep. A lot of people that I have over heard talking about this issue are more concerned about the fact that it happened at Penn State than because a group of college students actively promoted racial stereotypes and offended an entire race of people. This was very concerning to overhear and makes me want to enroll every single person upset about this incident in Sociology 119.

The only thing that I know would definitely put me into "attack mode" would be if my family or close friends were being threatened in some way. I consider myself a very protective person and I would do anything (including killing someone) to make sure that they were safe. However other than this situation, I find it very hard to think about a situation in which I would get so upset and angry that I would kill someone. Obviously, just like everyone else, I have those moments where someone annoys me so much that I say "I'm going to kill you" but there is no meaning or intent behind it. For example when my boss makes me work a 13 hour shift, I'm not very happy and I would much prefer it if he didn't do this. Most of the time halfway through this shift, I'm about ready to kill him but I obviously never would. A situation that involved someone’s safety, even if they were a stranger, would probably be something that could get me into a frenzy. But it would probably have to be a very serious and dangerous situation. Like if I happened to be stuck in a rare situation, like a hostage situation or I am witnessing some sort of abuse. I think this has to do with my major, along with my protective personality traits. I am a Rehabilitation and Human Services major and we are supposed to do what is best for people using anything and everything in our power. With this major, I have witnessed some very upsetting situations that people are living in. I interned with a social worker company for a summer and visited some very heart breaking living situations that children were stuck in. If I had been visiting one of those homes and witnessed the abuse that we were investigating, I think I may have been angered enough to start attacking the parents. But that may be just because I was starting to get personally attached to the children after seeing them every day for a eight weeks. Another situation where I would be ok with killing someone has to do more with the criminal system. I think that people who have killed others should be killed themselves and I would lethally inject them with very little to no remorse. I have taken forensic classes and criminology classes and still don't understand why some people do not get the death penalty. I do understand that some people think that it is better to let people suffer in jail for the rest of their life than to let them get the "easy way out" by dying. However how is that a fair system? Why should someone who killed dozens of people for the thrill or for some other stupid reason, be allowed to continue living? The only fair payment I see for taking a life is for your life to be taken in return. This would also solve the problems that our nation has with jails not having enough room to hold all the criminals. Killing murderers, instead of sentencing them to 183 years (or some other ridiculous number) in jail would free up a lot of room. So I would be alright with killing murderers, as long as there was concrete evidence that they committed the crime.

I first want to start by saying that I think Tuesday was one of the most interesting, mind opening, and influential classes that we have had so far in the semester. I have to admit that I was totally shocked that this was a topic in our class, but it involves some level of discrimination and that is what we talk about in class. Anyway I personally know many people who are homosexual or bisexual and I definitely disagree with the idea that it is a choice to be that way. In all honesty I think the whole idea of labeling someone by the gender that they are attracted to is extremely annoying. People are attracted to who they are attracted to and there is nothing wrong with that. I do not think that it requires labeling. Should I be labeled because I like guys with dark hair over guys with light hair? No because that is just stupid. It is just the look that I like and gender fits into a person's look. I have personally witness people be discriminated against because of their sexuality and it disgusts me that people think they have a right to judge someone because of whom they are attracted to. Choosing to be homosexual, bisexual or heterosexual is a crazy thought. No one can choose who they are attracted to or explain why they are attracted to that population. I think that people feel the need to have some type of explanation for why people are different from the "norm" because people are too curious for their own good. I also think that it has to do with people's resistance to differences in the world. Every day in class we talk about how people still to this day can not get over the fact that there are different races and ethnicities in the world. The same fact applies to the different sexualities in the world, people can't accept it. Maybe this trend of calling it a choice started with the parents of people who are homosexual or bisexual. The parents could not begin to believe that their child was born this way so they decided to think of it as a choice, something they could punish their child for and try to force a different choice upon them. Or maybe this “choice” trend started with people who were having difficulty accepting their sexuality. They were hoping to change how they felt and it is easier to change something that is a choice than something you are born as. No matter where the “choice” trend started, I think it is absolutely absurd. I think that people are born with a set of characteristics that they are attracted to. It might take someone forever to figure out exactly what those characteristics are, but they don’t choose them over their lifetime.

I never really thought about where I beliefs came from before we talked about it in class. But after listening to Sam, I feel like I agree with what he says when he states that beliefs aren’t usually based on fact. A fact is a fact, we can't change it. When most people hear a fact, they spin it so that it makes sense to them. Then it is no longer the fact that they once heard and it cannot be said to grounded on the fact that they heard because they changed it. So then they are left with a belief or an opinion about the topic. It sounds like a complicated cycle, but it made sense to me after hearing Sam talk about misinformation.
I really liked how Sam introduced the topic to us in class by making us think about child abductions. This issue is on the TV and in magazines all the time, so we believe that it happens all the time. Then he shocked us with the true statistics and we realized that our beliefs were misinformed. I really thought it was interesting after a classmate tweeted about child abductions and we had the opportunity to learn even more about being misinformed.
I think our beliefs come from a variety of places and very few times do we get beliefs from facts. There are so many things in the world that we are influenced by and they create our beliefs. For example my beliefs about race relations are changed every day from going to class with Sam. My beliefs have also been influenced by family members. For example, I have certain beliefs about how life should be lived that I got from my grandmother, who was influenced by her parents who were influenced by their parents and so on. With all the things that have an impact on our beliefs, I don't see how they could be anything but misinformation. However I don't think that beliefs can ever be labeled as wrong or incorrect. They may not have facts to completely back them up, but they are right for the person who believes the belief.
Knowing this, it makes me wonder about the decisions that people make for us and the country. For example, President Barack Obama makes choices for the United States based on what he believes is best for the population. I know he is presented with a lot of facts and information about whatever the issue is. However I am now thinking so how can he really make the best choice for us with his beliefs are misinformed and influenced by so much. The same question applies to senators, state representatives, judges, teachers, parents, government officials and others who make decisions for a group. How can we trust that they are doing what’s best when they are using their misinformed beliefs?

I personally would find you very approachable. The things that Sam pointed out in class do not determine what every person uses to determine whether someone is approachable or not. I personally look at the facial expressions that the person is making first. The look that their face is giving off, in my opinion, is one of the biggest things that determines whether I want to go up to someone or not. For example, if I was going to talk to a professor and they are clearly annoyed at something, I will no longer want to step foot in their office. From the few moments that I looked at you in class while you were working with Sam, you weren't giving off any negative vibes. You seemed relaxed and at ease in front of the class and very willing to help Sam demonstrate his point. Your race and hair do not have any affect on me when I am thinking about how approachable you are. That may have to do with the fact that I come from a suburb very close to Philadelphia and often spend time in the city. Therefore I have interacted with people of many different races and ethnicities. Your race may be something that is important to you and you want people to know that. However I think that no matter how important an appearance trait is to us, there should be no reason why we should be judged by our appearance. I do think that there are people out there who would have a problem approaching you because of your race. However there could be people out there who would have a problem approaching me, a white female, because of either my race or gender. I think this just shows the point that Sam has been trying to make all semester. People need to be educated about race relations and need to get over the fact that every one is different.

Before the discussion we had in class about determinism and free will, I am not sure where exactly I stood. I think that I always thought that everything that happens in life was a mix of determinism and free will. There are some things in life that I think cannot be explained by free will while there are also some things that I couldn't imagine being pre-determined for me without my choice. After class, I still can't seem to choose either determinism or free will. Every time I try to think of the world as just one way or another, I seem to find a lot of exceptions. I think the biggest part in a person's life that has to do with determinism, is the family in which people are born into. It's impossible to choose what set of parents that you are born into. If this were true only the rich and famous would have children because I don't think anyone would voluntarily choose to live in poverty or a violent family. I think it’s also hard to categorize what other people in your life do as free will. What other people do has an impact in your life. For example, I never freely choose for my professors to give a pop quiz in class or for my manager to schedule me for shifts that are 13 hours long. I do think, however, that after a person is born everything that happens to them is by some way a result of a choice they made. Obviously for young kids this is hard to debate. At my current age, I think that everything that has happened to me is by my choosing. One of the examples that we shared in class was preparing and failing a test. We tried to show both the free will aspects and the determinism aspects of failing the test. Thinking back to all the reasons, I think that they can all be looked at from a free will perspective. Students may claim that they are not good at taking tests; however it was by free choice that they chose not to improve their test taking skills with classes and practice exams. Most students choose not to study before an exam and choose to do other things, such as party, drink, sit on Facebook, and/or work at their job. I can't think of an excuse that could be explained by determinism. All in all, I think that a person’s life is made up of things that are out of their control and things that are controllable. Even though a person’s life is made up of both determinism and free will, I think that free will plays a bigger role. These choices are made more often and therefore have a bigger impact on a person’s life.

I think all the rates that we talked about in class are a result of many things. First off I agree with what was said in class about only the rich being able to immigrate into the United States. It not only takes a lot of money to move to America from another country, but it also takes a lot of money to continue to live in the United States. However I think that this only applies to countries that are far away. Immigrants from Mexico or close South American countries do not need to travel far to come to the United States, and therefore do not need as much money. This money that immigrants travel with is normally not spent frivolously due to the lifestyle that the immigrant is used to living. Therefore they have money that they traveled to the United States with and they are adding a salary to that money. The second reason for these statistics, I think, has to do with high school and college completion statistics. Studies have shown that more Asian and White students graduate from both high school and college than African American and Hispanic students. Those students who graduated have better job opportunities and therefore better salaries. While this is not true for every single Asian and White person in America, I believe it is true for a majority. The quality of the education also matters. Student who come from better quality of schools are at a higher chance of getting a good job than those who go to low quality schools. Normally those who go to low quality schools are also likely to come from low socioeconomic status families and live in poverty. Another thing to consider is the education systems overseas. It is a well-known fact that Asian school systems are much better that the education system in America. Therefore when Asians immigrate to America, they have an advantage to obtaining well-paying jobs. All these aspects of a person life often lead to different financial lifestyles. These are potential reasons as to why the statistics look the way they do. I believe another reason for the statistics is the lifestyles of generations before ours. It is very hard to get out of the lifestyle that family members before us have lived. For example, if your parents are poor then as a child you live a poor lifestyle that leads allows for very few opportunities to move up in social classes. These children may have been able to graduate, but rarely are able to graduate from college due to expenses. They then live a life as best they could, but in today’s society not many great jobs are available to those who have not gone to college.

I thought the guessing game exercise in class was very entertaining but also educational. I was not, however, surprised at all that the guessing students were not able to identify the specific country that the students ancestry came from, especially those that were from such small and not well known countries. I have heard so many times here on campus that people of Asian descent "all look the same" and I think that that stereotype has a big impact on identifying cultures and therefore had a big impact on the class exercise. However the same could be said of people who are American, British, Scottish, Irish and descendants of other European countries. These populations don’t have many physical factors that make it easy to distinguish between the cultures. I would like to see this guessing game done for those who are of the populations that I just mentioned and see if someone from a different ethnicity would be able to guess where the participants’ ancestors came from. It would also be interesting to play the guessing game with religions. I personally do not think that someone looks “insert chosen religion here”. However I know that others would disagree with me on that topic since we discussed this is class.
I personally would not have very well at the guessing game either, even though I have had a lot of experience with people from other cultures. I even worked for an Asian company and interacted with many first generation and second generation people of Asian descent. Even after all that experience, while I was working there I still was not able to distinguish between Korean, Chinese and Japanese co-workers. It was embarrassing when I would mix their nationalities and cultures up, however as embarrassed as I was, each co-worker understood. They would tell me that it happened all the time and that they understood how confusing it could be for someone who has not spent their whole life learning the differences between the cultures.
I heard many students who, during class, expressed how surprised they were at the guesses the player of the guessing game would make. I think that, even after all our class discussions, people still don’t understand the variety of cultures that exist just in the small city of State College. Students weren’t even thinking of countries like Taiwan or Cambodia for the Asian students, they only ever thought Chinese or Japanese. The same happens for students who are of Middle Eastern descent. Students would only ever guess Afghanistan or Iran as if no other Middle Eastern countries existed. I hope that this class allows students to open their minds up about the vast amounts of cultures and ethnicities that exist in your city and our world today.

The pictures that we saw in class today were definitely eye openers. I think I truly knew that citizens were the ones who were getting hurt the most in a war, but the reality of it did not faze me until after I saw the horrific pictures. I feel like this was the most common reaction in the classroom. I know the other students I was sitting with felt very similarly to how I felt. It is really scary to think about how many innocent elderly, adults and children are losing their lives because of the fighting between countries. What is even scarier to think about is the fact that these attacks keep being ordered by our President, even though I believe that he has to know about the innocent citizens being killed by them. I do not understand how President Obama can keep ordering an act of war or defense that leaves so many harmless and unknowing people injured or dead. I want to know how heavily this weighs on President Obama’s decision making. Seeing those children in the hospitals, in pain, or in the holes in the ground was absolutely heartbreaking and I wanted to do something to stop this from happening. However that would mean going against the President of my country, who is supposed to be making the best decisions for Americans. So I wonder if he feels that the lives of the innocents in other countries are able to be sacrificed for the innocent lives of American citizens. Is that what his decision comes down to, a foreign innocent to a native innocent? I do not want make this a political debate about the workings and the effectiveness of the current President because no one can make the perfect decisions. I feel that there has to be some way for him to decrease the innocent civilian casualty rates when he decides to attack another country. Something I did not even think about until Sam asked all the military service people in the class to stand up, was what they thought about this all. How do they feel when they are sent on a mission that they know will lead to innocent civilian casualty. I know that one student veteran in class said that interactions are normally peaceful; however there must be some times when not everything goes smoothly? Do they just see an innocent person down the barrel of their gun or do they see a potentially harmful person from a country that is going to hurt America? Does it really disturb them to have to potentially attack children and old people or are they just following orders to keep American civilians safe at home?

So when I first thought about Sam’s idea of focusing on our differences as a way to not focus on our differences sounds extremely contradictory I was really confused, until I thought about it. As we were talking about this in class, I was thinking about all my rehabilitation and human services classes where we learn to help people with disabilities. Those lessons always start with knowing how to properly acknowledge a person’s disability. If you ignore it, then you are already failing at your job and rendering yourself useless. We also learn that there are proper ways to acknowledge a disability that someone has, but ultimately you still have to recognize it. We are taught to look at a person’s disability as a part of who they are, just as if someone would look at me and see a young woman with green eyes. A person’s disability is just a difference between two people. A disability is one characteristic of a person, not the only characteristic. This statement can also apply to the differences between peoples race, religion, and culture.
So this idea can also be applied to realizing the differences that exist in the world in races and cultures. I definitely agree with Sam when he said that we can’t deny the existence of a difference because then we will never be able to accept it. People need to learn to open their eyes, see how the world is different, embrace it, and move on. The society that we live in is filled with so many differences and they shouldn’t be ignored. We can learn from them. Like during our class, I had a discussion with some classmates after the explosion in class on Tuesday September 4th. Most of us had no idea that the phrase “colored people” was offensive to people of color. Some of us didn’t even notice it when it was said in class because it used the same words just in a different arrangement. I was embarrassed that I didn’t know that since I went to school right outside of Philadelphia with a very diverse student population.
I personally feel that I have already learned to accept all the differences that exist in our society. Part of it is because of where I am from and I grew up in a very accepting family. Another reason for my acceptance is the education I have received here at Penn State. Other sociology classes and the rehabilitation and human services classes often include lessons about interacting with people who are different than you. I now go to class and rarely notice the differences. I know that there are people of other races and religions than myself, but that is something I have come to embrace and enjoy about our society.